A Reference Architecture for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things requires multiple Reference Architectures which can map capabilities to specific technology domains. This is a challenge because there is no single unifying industry definition for the Internet of Things. For the purpose of this presentation it is assumed that:

• “Things” have semantic representation in the Internet
• “Things” can be acted upon in a structured manner (e.g., status, capabilities, location, measurements) or can report in structured data or can communicate directly with other “Things”
• “Things” may be active (e.g., Zigbee sensor) or passive (e.g. RFID tag)
• Different “Things” may use multiple protocols to communicate with each other and the internet